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From a soldier's message to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) concerning the US Army's mandatory "Spiritual Fitness" test, the Global Assessment Tool (GAT):

I cannot count the number of times that these chaplains and my own chain of command has described this war we fight as a religious one against the Muslims and their "false, evil and violent" religion. I am a Christian and therefore neither an agnostic nor an atheist though many of my fellow soldiers are such. Now to the point. I, and everyone else who is enlisted in my company, was ORDERED by my Battalion Commander to take the GAT's Spiritual Fitness Test not very long ago. Let me make this CLEAR, we were all ORDERD to take it. After we did, our unit's First Sgt. individually asked us all how we did on the test. There was NO "anonymity" at all.

An experimental, Army mental-health, fitness initiative designed by the same psychologist whose work heavily influenced the psychological aspects of the Bush administration's torture program is under fire by civil rights groups and hundreds of active-duty soldiers. They say it unconstitutionally requires enlistees to believe in God or a "higher power" in order to be deemed "spiritually fit" to serve in the Army.

the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) sent a letter to Secretary of the Army John McHugh and General Casey, the Army's chief of staff, demanding that the Army immediately cease and desist administering the "spiritual" portion of the CSF test.

"The majority of the spiritual statements soldiers are asked to rate are rooted in religious doctrine, premised on a common dogmatic belief regarding the meaning of life and the interconnectedness of living beings," the letter further states. "The statements in the tests and remedial materials repeatedly promote the importance of being a believer of something over electing to be a nonbeliever. Moreover, the images that accompany portions of the CSF Training Modules make clear the religious aspects of the spirituality training."

There's a fundamentalist ministry operating at the Air Force Academy called Cadets For Christ. This ministry is part of the "shepherding" movement, using cult-like tactics by which the cadets recruited by ministry leaders Don and Anna Warrick are separated from their families and anything else that might interfere with their brainwashing. In the shepherding movement, the female is the "sheep" and the male is the "shepherd," and a woman's sole purpose in life is to be a good wife and mother, subordinating herself to her male shepherd.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has been contacted by a number of parents of Academy cadets who have fallen prey to the Warricks' ministry, and one of these families has been brave enough to go public with their story.

Now the President needs to sign it and implement it ASAP. Since it’s such a historic day, let’s laugh together at Bryan Fischer of the hate group American Family Association, whose response is SUPER crybaby. First the headline:

Benedict Arnold Republicans destroy military and our national security

Oh god, so funny, can’t type, laughing too hard. Here’s what he says:

We are now stuck with sexual deviants serving openly in the U.S. military because of turncoat Republican senators.

Last week, on the heels of the release of the alarming statistics on religious harassment at the U.S. Air Force Academy, the Academy held a religious respect conference. Who wasn't invited to this religious respect conference?.....The statistics on religious harassment, from the Academy's bi-annual "climate survey," were only made public after a demand from MRFF and a number of other organizations, both religious and secular, who signed onto MRFF's letter to the Secretary of Defense.

One of the most serious issues highlighted in MRFF's letter (an issue that would have been addressed at the Academy's religious respect conference if MRFF had been invited) is the problem of fundamentalist Christian ministries being given free reign over Academy cadets -- particularly a ministry called Cadets for Christ, described by the parents of several cadets recruited by this ministry as a "cult."

Under the influence of Cadets for Christ, one recent Academy graduate is now completely estranged from her family. Why? because they are Catholic, and therefore unsaved according to Cadets for Christ founders Don and Anna Warrick.

The truth is that when it comes to pandering to powerful religious/ethnic "blocs" in the US the biggest game in town is the across the board bowing to the white Evangelical "base" of the Republican Party. That's the bloc of voters that adds up to real numbers, as high as a third of the American voting population.

It's the Christian Zionists who have driven American foreign policy over a cliff. (I'm speaking here as the proud father of a Marine, who was sent to war in the Middle East, again and again.) Christian Zionists continuously jeopardize our future by putting the promotion of harebrained interpretations of biblical "prophecy" ahead of the well being of both Israel and the US.

To the Christian Zionists "defending Israel" is just a handy pretext for indulging their obsession: egging on, even "helping" the fulfillment of "biblical prophecies" about the "return of Christ." But their worst sin isn't just embracing dumb "theology" but that they have enabled a nefarious group of losers to irreparably harm America and contribute to the needless killing of our men and women in uniform worldwide: the neoconservatives.

To the neoconservatives "defending Israel" is just a handy pretext for upholding the myth of "American exceptionalism" for profit and nationalistic "glory," of the kind that was supposed to have gone out of fashion when hubris and stupidity got half the young male population of Europe killed in World War One.

There are few Religious Right activists who can match Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber in terms of anti-gay animosity, so I guess it should come as no surprise that he wants to see President Obama impeached ... for extending leave to domestic partners

Over the past several years, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has received a steady stream of complaints about two related issues: 1.) religious "infomercials" on the American Forces Network (AFN), the television and radio service provided by the military to service members stationed overseas and on naval vessels; and 2.) televisions located in various facilities on military installations, such as PXs and gyms, being tuned to religious programming, subjecting service members using these non-religious facilities to unwanted evangelizing and/or proselytizing.

Recently, these complaints have taken on some new twists. The complaints about religious "infomercials" on the AFN now not only include evangelizing by chaplains and other unacceptable promotions of religion during non-religious programming, but are promoting religion as a substitute for professional mental health care for service members suffering from PTSD, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health problems.